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Top 10 Winemaking mistakes

Modified on: Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 7:33 PM

For
our home wine makers who want to improve on their craftsmanship let's discuss the ten winemaking mistakes.

1. Inadequate Equipment

Winemaking equipment, such as pails, carboys
and spoons often seem similar to items that may be around the home.
However, in many cases, proper winemaking equipment and utensils are
made of special materials and this can influence your finished product.

Re-using plastic pails from other sources,
like buckets that previously held food products, is always a mistake.
The food odors will have sunk into the plastic, and will taint the wine.
Also, plastic items not intended for food purposes, such as brand-new
garbage pails must never be used for winemaking. The pigments, UV
protectants and plasticizers (chemicals used to keep the plastic from
becoming brittle) will leach into the wine, and could affect your
health.

We will gladly direct you to equipment appropriate for winemaking. Saving a few
dollars by using suspect equipment is not worth it.

2. Cleaning and Sanitation

90% of all winemaking failures can be traced
to a lapse in cleaning or sanitation. Cleaning is removing visible dirt
and residue from your equipment. Sanitizing is treating that equipment
with a chemical that will eliminate, or prevent the growth of spoilage
organisms.

Everything that comes in contact with your
wine must be clean, and properly sanitized, from the thermometer to the
carboy, from the siphon hose to the bung and airlock. One single lapse
could cause a failure of your batch.

3. Failure to Follow Instructions

Wine kit instructions may seem to be long and
complicated, and the urge is to simplify them, or to standardize steps
between different kits. This is always a mistake, for several reasons.

First, the kit instructions are based both on
sound winemaking techniques, and empirical trials. This means that not
only did some egghead write the instructions based on book learning, he
made his assistants actually follow the instructions to the letter,
hundreds of times, to make sure they worked.

Second, if your kit fails to ferment
correctly, or clear sufficiently, there may be no easy way to correct it
if you have not followed the directions.

This is sometimes a problem in that kit
instructions are very different from those for wines made from fresh
grapes. Trying to use the techniques described in winemaking textbooks
will usually lead to problems: wine kits are another kettle of fish
entirely.

4. Bad Water

Water is not quite as critical as many people
think. In fact, if your water is fit to drink, it is usually just fine
for winemaking. However, if your water has a lot of hardness or a high
mineral content, especially iron, it could lead to permanent haze or off
flavors. Also, if your house is equipped with a salt-exchange water
softener, that water can’t be used for winemaking. If you’re in doubt,
go ahead and use bottled spring (not distilled) water to make your wine: you’ll appreciate the
difference.

5. Poor Yeast Handling

If you look at the instructions in your wine
kit (and please, do), they will likely instruct you to sprinkle your
packet of yeast directly on to the must. Yet if you read the yeast
package (and many winemaking textbooks) they recommend rehydrating the
yeast. If the objective is to deliver the maximum number of yeast cells
to the must, which technique is best?

It turns out that the answer is not as simple
as one or the other. When performed correctly, rehydrating gives the
highest live cell counts, and the quickest, most thorough fermentation.
The catch is, it has to be done precisely correctly. Lalvin EC 1118
champagne yeast, for instance, asks you to add the yeast to 10 times its
weight in water at 40º–43ºC (104º–109ºF).

Breaking it down, the amount of ’10 times’ is
important if you’re trying to maximize live cell counts. That’s because
the yeast is dried on a substrate of nutrients and sugars. At a ratio
of 10:1 water/yeast, the osmotic pressure allows for maximum nutrient
uptake (osmotic pressure is influenced by the dissolved solids in the
water, like nutrients and sugars). If too much water is used, the yeast
will grow only sluggishly. If too little water is used, the cells may
burst from the flood of liquid and nutrients forced into them.

Secondly, the temperature range is
inflexible. The outer wall of a yeast cell is made up of two layers of
fatty acids. These layers soften best in warm water, much as greasy film
will come off of dishes best in warm water. Once it has softened up, it
will allow the passage of nutrients and waste products in and out of
the cell much more efficiently. If the water isn’t warm enough, the cell
won’t soften. If it’s too warm, generally anywhere above 52ºC (125.6ºF)
the yeast cell will cook and die.

The next thing you have to worry about is
temperature shear. Yeast is terrifically sensitive to environmental
conditions. If it goes too quickly from a favorable temperature to a
less favorable one, weakened cells may die, and others may go dormant,
in an attempt to ride out the temperature shift. This reduces the
numbers of live, viable cells available to ferment the must, and gives
spoilage organisms a chance to get a foothold, and potentially ruin your
wine. So if you are rehydrating your yeast, you’ll have to wait as the
yeast cools to within two degrees of your must temperature before adding
it: accuracy counts!

On the other hand, simply dumping the yeast
onto the top of the must should result in lower cell counts. Empirical
evidence shows this isn’t the case: the yeast appear to know what
they’re doing. Generally, a five-gram packet of yeast will have less
than a six-hour lag phase on an average wine kit. This is perfectly
acceptable, and isn’t long enough to allow spoilage organisms to get a
foothold in your wine. Plus, it’s a heck of a lot simpler than going
through the rehydrating process, fraught as it is with risks.

You can rehydrate your yeast if you
absolutely want to, but be sure to do it accurately and precisely. The
rest of us will tear open the package and dump it in, and spend the
extra time sampling our last batch!

6. Poor Temperature Control
Kit instructions tell you to ferment your wine within a specific
temperature range. We recommend 20° – 25°C (70°F to 77°F). Yeast thrives
between these temperatures. This is one of the situations where s wine kits instructions are different than commercial wine making techniques.
In commercial wineries, some white wines are fermented cooler than
this, sometimes below 55°F. Commercial wineries have the luxury of
process control and taking a year (or two, or three) before they bottle
their wines, so they don’t face the home wine makers’ issues. For you
namely, if the fermentation area is too cool the wine will ferment very
slowly. This will lead to an excess of CO2 gas (fizz) in the wine, and
it may not be ready to stabilize and fine on the appropriate day. Even
worse, the kind of fining agents included with wine kits don’t work
well at temperatures outside of the 20° – 25°C (70°F to 77°F) range.
Below 19°C (68°F) your wine kit may not clear at all!

7. Adding Sulphite and Sorbate at the wrong time
Sulphite and Sorbate, the stabilizers in the kit work to inhibit yeast
activity. If, by mistake, you add them too early your wine may not
finish fermenting. If you add the sorbate on day one, the yeast will
never become active, and the kit will not ferment.

8. Leaving out the Sulphite
Some people believe that they are allergic to sulphites, and want to
leave them out of their kits. While this is their option, it’s a bad
idea. True sulphite allergies are terrifically rare, and if someone has a
reaction to drinking wine, it’s almost always due to some other cause.
Besides, yeast make sulphites themselves during fermentation, so no wine
can ever be sulphite-free, no matter what.

Without added sulphites the kit will oxidize and spoil very rapidly.
It will start to go off in less than 4 weeks, and be undrinkable in less
than three months. Also, if the sulphite is left out, but the sorbate
is added, the wine will be attacked by lactic bacteria, which will
convert the sorbate into the compound hexadienol, which smells like
rotting geraniums and dead fish.

The bottom line is this: if you do not add the sulphite to the kit,no one can guarantee the wine, so think
carefully before you do it.

9. Not Stirring
On day one, the kit needs to be stirred very vigorously. This is because
the juice and concentrate are very viscous, and don’t mix easily with
water. Even if it seems that dumping the contents of the bag into the
primary with the water has done the job, it hasn’t. The juice lies on
the bottom of the pail, with a layer of water on top, throwing off any
gravity readings, and making the yeast work extra hard.

When it comes time to stabilize and fine the wine, it has to be
stirred vigorously enough to drive off all of the CO2 it accumulated
during fermentation. This is because the dissolved gas will attach to
the fining agents, preventing them from settling out. You need to stir
hard enough to make the wine foam, and keep stirring until it will no
longer foam. Only then will the gas be driven off so the fining agents
can work their magic.

10. Not Waiting
Wine kits are ready to bottle in 4 to 8 weeks depending on the kit;
they’re not ready to drink! If you really, really can’t wait, the
minimum time before a kit tastes good is about two weeks. This is long
enough for the wine to get over the shock of bottling, and begin opening
up to release its aromas and flavors. Three months is much better, and
the wine will show most of its character at this point. For most whites,
however, and virtually all reds, six months is needed to smooth out the
wine and allow it to express mature character. Heavy reds will continue
to improve for at least a year, rewarding your patience with delicious
bouquet.